Organization Mission: Provide one-on-one consultations on writing for any discipline, any level and any point in the writing process.

Description: In order to continue staff training, beyond the initial semester orientation, the WIU Writing Center Director and Tutor Coordinator continue to conduct face-to-face staff development meetings. These meetings are once a week throughout the fall semesters and once a month throughout the spring semesters. Topics discussed in these meetings vary from best practice techniques to help students with development, organization and brainstorming to discussing strategies to help students conduct research. Meetings usually begin with announcements and reminders and then move into a lesson or discussion of that meetings topic. Sometimes guest speakers come and other times face-to face mock-tutoring sessions are used to facilitate staff learning and development.

Approach Proposal: I propose every other meeting be converted into an e-learning development module that staff members use to continue their development. This will help solve the problem of finding a time every week when everyone can attend a face-to face meeting. It will also give added benefit to the staff because they can do the development module on there own time and access it as many times as they wish. Depending on the topic chosen for the learning module(s) they can also be recycled and used each semester reducing the amount of preparation time that the Director and Tutor Coordinator have to put into every meeting. This will let them focus more on the reduced number of face-to face meetings and help them become more comprehensive.

In addition, this type of meeting will allow for all writing center consultants to share their ideas and views. In regular face-to-face meetings, conversation is usually dominated by the more extrovert consultants while more introverted consultants keep quite. If each consultant is “required” to make at least one post then their ideas have an outlet and audience. It would also allow for the knowledge, ideas and strategies discussed within each module to be gathered, reviewed multiple times, saved and implemented into further staff development meetings rather than ideas (that are not being written down) being lost in the natural organic progression of face-to-face conversations.

Instructor-led or Learner-led

This training would be a mix of instructor-led and learner-led. The activities, lecture, reading, discussion, any quizzes/assessments of material would be learner-led. However, the Director and Tutor Coordinator would be available for questions, support and discussion.

Synchronous or Asynchronous

This training would again, fall in the middle of being Synchronous and Asynchronous. Everyone involved would complete the training at a different point during the week. However, they would also be able to come together for discussions. This would provide the best of both worlds so staff can complete training as their time allows but also be able to come together to facilitate discussion.

Class Size

The class size would depend on the number of tutors working for the Writing Center. The number would fall between 15 and 20 so the class size would be small allowing for more individual attention and possibility for whole-class activities via online.

Location

Location would require internet access but locations for taking this development training could vary from a computer lab, non-office workplace, learning center, home, dorm-room, outdoors or while traveling. It could be done from a lap-top at any of the locations the learner chose. This would maximize the flexibility of access for the learner in allowing them to be able to do it in various locations.

Pure WBI or blended (hybrid) of classroom training and WBI

This training would be completely web-based. It would include a blend of many forms of learning possibilities to help maximize the amount of retained learning from the staff. It would mix informational, behavioral, cognitive and constructive strategies (Horton, 2002, p. 381). It might also mix websites, books, online help files, video broadcasts, e-mail exchanges and or blog exchanges depending on the topic(s) that were chosen to be covered.

Design Standards

Standards that would apply to the design of this online format would be: all four main groups and the eighteen different aspects of design quality standards (Horton p. 404-405), the Web accessibility standards/World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (Horton p. 405) and U.S. section 508. Since this online training would be designed for a very small and specific group of people, it is likely that to comply with U.S. section 508 standards an alternative approach would be used. The alternative approach could be using alternative content or claiming an exemption.

The target browser(s) for this training would be Mozilla FireFox 10.1.0 and Internet Explorer. These browsers would be used because they are the primary browsers seen and used by Western Illinois University in the computer labs. They are also widely used by the general student population on their personal computers. File formats that would be used for materials would include browser native formats: HTML, Java/JavaScript, Gif, Jpeg and PNG graphics. The independent formats could include: Audio: MP3, Video: MPEG and the popular web formats Sound: WMA, WAV and Real Audio, Video: Shockwave Flash, Flash video and Quick Time. Also documents: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) and the desktop formats in the applications available from Microsoft Office.

Example Lesson/Development Module

Lesson Title:Tutor Dependency

Length: 2 hours to complete

Target Learning Objectives:

1. Primary Objective: Decide (Horton p. 16)

Writing Consultants will decide a strategy for dealing with a situation of tutor dependency.

2. Secondary Objective: Know (Horton p. 17)

Writing Consultants will know how to identify a situation of tutor dependency and will be able to implement strategies to help correct the situation.

3. Complete Objective: (Horton p. 19)

Learners: Writing Center Consultants

Situation: When faced with a situation of tutor dependency

Action: Identify a situation of tutor dependency/Implement strategies for correcting the situation

Criteria: Reduce the rate of tutor dependency by 50%

Activities: Absorb/Do/Connect:

Absorb: Writing Center consultants will be presented with the absorb activity of viewing an online slide presentation (Horton p. 49) to introduce the topic of tutor dependency.

Do: Writing consultants will engage in a discovery activity (Horton p. 105) by reading a case study containing an example or situation of tutor dependency.

Connect: Consultants will engage in a ponder activity (Horton p. 168) in which they will brainstorm ideas for solutions to the case study and post those ideas on the workshop discussion board available inside the Writing Center module on Western Online.

Consultants will also be able to review others postings, reply and discuss to further promote understanding of new ideas and discussions.

Description Design Development Plan:

First, the Writing Center Director and Tutor Coordinator will collaborate to make a short power point presentation slide show detailing the definition of tutor dependency and how it can manifest within the writing center (absorb activity). This will be posted on Western Online inside the Writing Center module available to all writing consultants when they log onto their Western Online homepage.

Second, they will find a case study containing an example or situation of tutor dependency for writing consultants to read (do activity/discovery). Potential places to find a case study example might include a Google search, Western library search, Writing Center lab newsletter or a previous case study developed by Writing Center Director. This case study will be posted as a PDF file along with the power point presentation inside the Writing Center module available to all writing consultants when they log into their Western Online homepage.

Third, the Writing Center Director and Tutor Coordinator will make a discussion module available with the power point presentation and case study reading for consultants to post their brainstormed ideas for possible solutions to the case study (connect activity).

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Author

As an instructional designer my focus is the design and development of effective online instruction, interactive learning objects, instructional alignment and the visual aspects of instructional materials. Specifically, how the inclusion of visuals within instruction can help facilitate learning.